Offence:One count of possessing child pornography, and one count of possessing child pornography depicting a child aged under 14 years

Sentence:One year suspended sentence on condition Webster obey a $50 good behaviour bond for 18 months.

Other:The prosecutor said the videos were not isolated offences as Webster’s internet search history showed he had previously accessed similar material. The offences were committed around the same time as Webster was working as a Santa Claus at Southgate Plaza in Morphett Vale. He stood trial in the District Court charged with five aggravated counts of indecent assault at Southgate Plaza in Morphett Vale and Kalara Reserve in Davoren Park in December 2012 & was found not guilty.

‘Bad Santa’ Harry Carr sentenced

HARRY Carr ‘‘got his jollies’’ showing pornographic Christmas films to little girls and appearing as a semi-naked Santa with a snowy white beard and tinsel on his genitals.

In court yesterday he had a red face and was not smiling when a judge sent him to jail for up to 12years.

The ‘‘Bad Santa’s’’ crimes against four girls as young as six were not the worst child sex offences Gosford District Court Judge Roy Ellis had seen, but required a lengthy sentence.

‘‘This is a serious set of offending for various reasons,’’ Judge Ellis said of Carr, 67, a disability pensioner who had not committed a criminal offence for 40years until his ‘‘friendships’’ with neighbourhood children in 2011 in the guise of Santa.

Over a period of weeks he encouraged an 11-year-old girl and three other girls aged from six to 11 to visit ‘‘Santa’s’’ house. He played the youngest girl and a 10-year-old a film that started as a Christmas video, and ended as a pornographic film with naked adults.

‘‘Me and [the younger child] closed our eyes. Seen a little bit of rude stuff but closed our eyes and looked the other way,’’ the older girl told police when asked about the film.

In court in November last year after pleading guilty to showing the films, Carr said he did it because ‘‘I wanted to get my jollies’’.

‘‘I wanted to see what they thought about it,’’ he said.

Carr admitted grooming the children and six acts of indecency against the girls, but denied more serious offences of aggravated sexual intercourse and indecently assaulting the 11-year-old.
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Judge Ellis found him guilty after accepting the girl’s evidence that a naked Carr pushed her on his bed with her hands behind her back and committed a sexual act.

The girl told her mother on New Year’s Day, 2012.

Judge Ellis sentenced Carr to a minimum seven years’ jail after noting he was willing to undertake a sex offenders program while in jail.

Groping ‘santa’ On Bond

A MAN who posed as Santa Claus and groped young women as they were being photographed sitting on his lap has been sentenced to three months in jail.

The sentence was suspended on condition that Angelo Iacono, 59, of Bonnells Bay, be of good behaviour for 18 months under NSW Probation and Parole Service supervision.

Holding his walking stick, Iacono stood while having the circumstances of the charges and his sentence read out to him in Toronto Local Court yesterday.

The court heard Iacono, who had pleaded not guilty, had been found guilty of three indecent assault counts involving three teenage girls.

The girls encountered him dressed as Santa Claus outside a business in Wyee on December 20 last year.

He offered them free photos with Santa using their camera. The girls posed for at least seven shots, tendered in evidence.

The court heard yesterday that the offences were at the lower end of the spectrum of seriousness for that type of charge. The offences did not involve skin-to-skin contact but it was still a serious matter and involved a breach of trust, the court was told.

‘Santa’ child sex attacker jailed

A man who sexually assaulted a child in Melbourne 29 years ago only to be caught last year after applying for a job as Santa Claus has been jailed for a minimum of 15 months.

Raymond Wayne O’Brien, 51, will be eligible for parole next year, having already served 216 days in custody.

O’Brien was initially charged in November 1977, but gave police a false name and fled to NSW. He was caught when he applied for a job as a Santa in 2005.

The victim, who cannot be identified, said she was “very happy” with the sentence, even though Judge Michael Bourke said many would take the view that the length of the jail term imposed on O’Brien did not reflect the gravity of the crimes.

Judge Bourke sentenced O’Brien to a maximum of three years and six months in jail, adding he was constrained by the maximum sentence, which in 1977 was five years.

“At the end of the day, what I wanted was for him to be on the sex offenders’ list,” the victim told reporters outside court. “He got more than what I expected.”

Judge Bourke said the behaviour displayed by O’Brien – who pleaded guilty in the County Court to three counts of indecent assault last month – would “revolt any decent person”.

“She lost her innocence and was then insulted and humiliated,” he said.

O’Brien attacked the girl, then aged 11, after grabbing her from a laneway in Oakleigh, on October 13, 1977. Repeatedly threatening to break her neck, he assaulted her three times. Forcing her to take $2.30 after the ordeal, O’Brien told the girl she would be called a prostitute if she went to the police.

O’Brien’s lawyer, Stewart Bayles, earlier told the court that while his client had admitted most of the offences to police, he no longer remembered the attack because he was a chronic alcoholic at the time.

But Judge Bourke said: “Your intoxication does not reduce the level of your moral culpability, which was significantly high.”

Judge Bourke told the victim he “greatly admired” her courage and dignity that she showed throughout the court case. “I wish you the very best for the rest of your life,” he said.